23 - 25 April, 2024 | Kampala, Uganda

How can ministries of education capitalize on the opportunities that data is generating globally to improve their policies? How can they create teams that enable them to leverage this information and translate it into decisions that address the policy problems they face? The IPA Embedded Lab Program partners with governments to address these questions, establishing Embedded Evidence Labs within government organizations, enabling them to harness the power of data and evidence to address the policy challenges they encounter. In order to support governments' efforts to advance their Labs, IPA has launched the Cross-Country Learning Exchange (CCLE), a space to promote South-South learning and exchange among governments leading the conversation on how to incorporate data and evidence into decision-making.

We launched the CCLE 3rd edition in Kampala, Uganda from April 23rd to 25th, 2024. The event was co-hosted with our partner in Uganda, the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES), and convened ten Ministries of Education and early childhood institutions from Colombia, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Philippines, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia gathering to exchange and learn. This edition built upon previous CCLE events, the first in Ghana 2019 where governments from Ghana, Zambia, and Côte d'Ivoire learned from the experience of MineduLAB in Peru and started their Embedded Evidence Labs, and the second in Rwanda 2022 where government teams focused on various aspects of the design and research services of the Labs. In this 3rd edition, we emphasized how governments can institutionalize the labs in order to make them sustainable.

The event reviewed how governments’ Embedded Evidence Labs are having an impact by producing and facilitating the use of different analytical products and evidence for decision-making. Teams then engaged hands-on through several workshops focused on the question of how to institutionalize Embedded Evidence Labs. Workshops focused on adapting the Lab learning cycle, designing their structure and governance, capacity development in the system, and allocating financial, legal, political, and public resources. For example, we heard how Labs like the ICBF Lab in Colombia accompany policy design by providing data and evidence at each stage, or how the EdLab of the Ministry of Education and Literacy of Côte d'Ivoire (MENA) builds ties with the ecosystem to make the Lab more sustainable. The MoES described how we can integrate Embedded Evidence Labs with topics such as Learning through Play. All of this was complemented by a visit to MoES's Lab to experience firsthand the work they are doing.

The CCLE event is a space designed for government agencies that are promoting the use of evidence and data to engage in dialogue. Through this dialogue among governments that, despite working in different contexts, face similar challenges, there will be a wealth of valuable learning that will help them improve the implementation of their Embedded Evidence Labs. Additionally, the discussion will feed into a learning agenda that addresses questions raised by government Lab teams, and towards which we will be systematizing shared learnings to translate them into public goods that we will be sharing.

Read the press release for CCLE.